Doctor's Visit

I had a routine visit with my oncologist today to test my white cell blood count (level of immunity) before chemo tomorrow. She said my cells were a bit low at 1.2 instead of the 1.5 minimum. This has no bearing on me receiving the chemo itself so we will go ahead as scheduled tomorrow. However, it does means that I will be needing self-administered injections starting 5 days after chemo to boost my bone marrow to produce more white blood cells. The chemo drugs lower your white blood cells so the doctor wants to make sure there will be high enough levels for the next round. The drug costs $150/injection so for this cycle, it would cost $1050! Don't worry, it should all be covered by extended health so we won't have to pay for it. Whew! I hate needles so I definitely won't be injecting myself and will leave it up to my sis who had the pleasure of using needles during her gestational diabetes earlier this year.

My doctor felt the tumor and didn't feel there was a huge difference in size. She said it was not unusual for my type of breast cancer and that as long it was not growing, we were making progress. She felt like the tumor was a bit more moveable but this could be due to the fact that in my last visit, I still had milk in them. It has even been hard for me to tell if the tumor has shrunk because the milk pushed it more to the surface, but I do know that it has not gotten bigger.

The other thing we talked about today was the mastectomy--single or double. The surgeon had already discussed this with me before and said that the cure was in the chemo treatment, not the mastectomy. She said a double mastectomy in my case would be more of a personal choice, rather than a necessity. People that get double masectomies either have a strong family history of breast cancer or they carried a mutated gene that predisposed them to the cancer. Genetic testing is a long process (3 months for results), is only available for certain patients, and has a waiting list. Since I am under 35 years old (which they consider unusual), I qualify to have the test done. My oncologist told me she would expedite the request for the test since I will be making a very important decision based on the results. To my surprise, I got a call within 4 hours of leaving the office and was booked an appointment for tomorrow noon!

So it will be quite a long day tomorrow out in the west side. I have a two hour break in between appointments so I will eat a hearty meal before and after chemo and hope I do better this time.

J